It was a large heart with lots of hearts growing smaller inside, and piercing from the outside rim to the smallest heart was an arrow. - Maya Angelou

I don’t know about lying for novelists. I look at some of the great novelists, and I think the reason they are great is that they’re telling the truth. The fact is they’re using made-up names, made-up people, made-up places, and made-up times, but they’re telling the truth about the human being — what we are capable of, what makes us lose, laugh, weep, fall down, and gnash our teeth and wring our hands and kill each other and love each other.

I found it hard to think of leaving my books. They had been my elevators out of the midden, and to whom could I entrust such close friends?

My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring, still.